Only Human

Hey, for the very few of you out there who come to the page and are actually following what I'm doing with the stories and such, know that I havn't forgotten about it all.

It's become crunch time in school and I'm up to my neck with work. (Mainly shit I should have had done weeks, even months ago, but such as it is to be a university student).

Either way, if not soon then over Christmas I'll be going hardcore once again with writing and I'll be finishing both current stories as well as posting a bunch of new ones I'm also working on. So don't forget about me and check back in a week or four and I'll see if I can't get some shit done. Peace

Nick

The Press Conference: Part 2

Before Gabe had completely made it into position the room was practically silent. The eyes of 400 people from all over the planet were fixed on him. This was how it was to be told. This is how they had told him to let the world know. Since his return to the planet the government had been pleading with him to tell them and them alone. They had tried every method they could think of to get him to tell them the truth, but he had refused to say anything until he could tell the entire world at once.

For several seconds he just stood there and watched the faces of those before him. He looked at the cameras and thought about the hundreds of millions of people who would be looking at his face right now with unimaginable anticipation. Briefly he mentally ran over the past 2 years of his life; the signal SETI picked up that started it all. It had contained a set of coordinates to what seemed like a planet in a binary star system on the far reaches of the galaxy. But most importantly it had held the specs and mathematics required to make a rip in space time and travel to those coordinates. The implications had been amazing. All at once humans had received proof beyond any doubt that they were not alone in the universe and at the same time a means of meeting one such race that we shared space with. After the initial amazement, subsequent testing and construction, the question of whether or not someone should be sent was never even raised, but instead simply, who it was going to be. Gabe had been the obvious choice. He was the first man to walk on Mars on August 4th, 2014. He had a seemingly uncanny resistance to solar radiation and had therefore spent more time in space or on another celestial body than any other man or woman on Earth.

After that, there had not been much training for Gabe. There had not even been a great deal of testing of the medium they would use to get him to what astronomers were soon referring to as 21k-Beta. The alien system. NASA and the Russian Space Agency were instantly all over the project, building the machine that would later be simply named Rapture. Within days after the publication that Gabe would be the sole traveller on the mission, his name and face were tattooed across the world. Within weeks there were religious groups holding internet and phone-in radio services for him, praising the almighty and newly dubbed Emissary. As most intelligent people would, Gabe hated it.

That thought brought him back to his senses. He thought once more about Matthews calling him by the title and silently wondered (not for the first time) about the mental stability of the man. He pushed the thought from his mind quickly however, Matthews meant nothing, and he was here to tell these people what he had learned. He only hoped they would accept what he was about to say.

The Press Conference: Part 1

Anticipation was the only word to describe it. A flurry of motion and noise emanated from the 400 or so people that stood in the large press room of the white house. Most of those people were foreign; reporters from newsrooms, papers, and magazines from every corner of the world, flown to the U.S. in the past three days for the event. It would turn out to be the most important press conference in the history of journalism. They had been specially selected from each major news corporation for the task as the rule that was so overpoweringly stressed and so strongly enforced was that but one reporter in attendance for every company was the absolute limit. Those of them who were not in front of live cameras talking to millions of people from their countries, getting them prepared for this news, now stood arguing and boasting to one another about various sources of information and mythic stories they had on file. They were the same stories that had been gracing everything from CNN headlines to supermarket tabloids for the past 18 months. It all came down to today. Even these people, as ignorant to the truth as they were knew the importance of what was about to be revealed.

Among the very few people in the room who now were remaining still and quiet was Gabriel Morianno. He stood with his back to the curtain that separated him from the reporters, off to the left of the raised podium, littered with microphones that towered at the front of the room. He was slowly looking around the blocked off area at the five people staring back at him. The first, his wife Chantel had pity in her eyes. She did not know what he was about to tell the world but she knew what it would mean. She apart from everyone here could read it in his eyes. It was very bad news. To her left stood Darren Sax, vice president of the United States, a man he had known since months before his journey and the only one here apart from Chantel that he trusted in the least. Next to Sax was Daniel Sutherland, the president. He was new to his presidency, had been elected while Gabe was gone. What a time to be instated in charge of the world’s super power he thought. After Sutherland was Vince Matthews, some military advisor dickhead, a general maybe. Sax had told Gabe his actual title, but he had dismissed it immediately; it was irrelevant. Finally was Connie Lambe, the secretary of defense. Gabe liked her. She had a good heart, but she was not prepared, nor would ever be prepared for what he was about to tell her. She would be of no help in the things to come. On that thought, he wondered how much good he, himself was going to do in the situation, but then remembered what he had learned in the past year and a half. It was a useless thought, depression, making the self feel insignificant. He had traveled a very long way to be here, and such thoughts were not the purpose behind his trip.

At length, it was Matthews who broke the silence between them.

"“Emissary, I’ll ask you once more. Don’t do this. I know you mean well, but if the things you have to say are as profound as you make it seem then it will only cause a worldwide hysteria that will cost lives.”" Gabe did not take his eyes from his wife’s for the whole conversation. He could tell that she recognized how much Matthews’ first word had irritated him. It had been a mistake to call him by that title.

"“I will tell you once more Vince, my name is Gabriel and if you call me that again I will feed your decorations to you. And believe it or not, your repeated, mindless pleas to stop something you know nothing about are not making the slightest impact on my judgment.”" With that Gabe stole a quick glance to Sax, and another, longer look to his wife, then turned and walked towards the podium.

The Birth of a Defect: Part 1

Reactivation always began with his audio. It was the most efficient way for his mind to cope with the reintegration of his body. He heard the low hum of the equipment around him and became aware. It was that awareness that told him something was wrong long before his other senses and motor functions came online nearly half a second later. There was another sound amidst the familiar noise of the facility; something foreign. The noise occupied the main part of his thoughts while he awaited full activation.

0.48 seconds after his awareness he stepped out of the niche in which he had deactivated himself and began the mental process of connecting to the facility's network. After being given an interfacing estimate of 1.78 seconds, he considered gathering the data himself but decided on using the time to complete some of his own tasks. A second processing thread spawned to interface with his nanoms, now magnetically attached to his torso; a default function of them during his downtime. Detecting this awareness, the microscopic machines sprang to life in a blur of what looked like heat waves surrounding him. Across the next 0.32 seconds his nanoms requested configuration settings, ran comparative diagnostic routines and reported in their state and identification numbers. Small knowledge structures began to transfer to his neural net. Redundancy read 100%. His name was Tacer, core defense drone for the Aggregate A.I. system; he was in the main facility that housed the aggregates power core and dormant collective consciousness; and something was definitely wrong.

While impatiently awaiting the final steps of connection initialization, he analyzed the foreign noises he'd heard while activating himself to try to gain more information. The noise had definitely came from the northern wing of the facility; a sort of scraping, accompanied by a great deal of thumping, his first thought had been footsteps. He added the data to his neural net.


Tacer.core.defense.log <3456/05/16/14:36:02:45>

Reactivation completed 3456/05/16/14:36:01:23.
All systems and threads running at 100%.
Current connection initialization to defensive mainframe in progress...
Current analysis of foreign audio presence in progress...

Awakened to an unfamiliar series of noises in the facility. They are as of now, unrecognizable but the repetitive scuffling I can distinguish would suggest footsteps. This is doubtful however as according to my redundancy check, I am currently the only activated drone housed in the facility.

Currently awaiting a connection to the main defensive matrix of the facility to further investigate.



After another irritable split second, the connection was made. He passed a part of his consciousness to the network and began to search, starting with the northern wing. He tried accessing the audio and video feeds from the main archway cameras but found the data to be corrupted, holding only static. The main arch of the hall led off to the east and west with smaller, older corridors; their rooms now used mainly for storage. He switched to the camera in the eastern hall and again found nothing of use from the feeds.

While navigating through the network to the western corridor camera, he began to spawn another processing thread to commence the activation of 2 repair drones to fix the downed cameras. This, however he abruptly stopped. It was not unheard of for the digital feeds of cameras to be corrupted during long periods of dormancy, but it was odd he thought for several to be down after only a few months of downtime.

Tacer tapped the feed from the western corridor camera just in time to see the blast wave from some sort of explosive device hit the lens, and the feed became static.

In nanoseconds he pulled himself out of the camera subsystems and looked around from his body. His emotion suppression routines did little to quell what was very quickly becoming anger and anxiety. He knew who was setting these explosives, which judging by the way the blast wave moved could only have been some sort of crude EMP charges. What he did not know was how they managed to make it into the facility during downtime; it was like a vault.

He saw who remotely set off the charge from the background of the image. Anger. It was the scroungers, the ungifted, those human members of society who are incapable of using nanom technology. And now they were somehow in here with him, carrying explosives capable of destroying him. He pushed that thought from his mind. He knew why they would be here with EMP weapons. They would be after the Aggregate, and it was the purpose of his entire existence to stop them.

He left the security station through the north exit and the door sealed behind him. Once again his nanoms flew to life in a flurry of motion surrounding him, they seemed angrier this time, like a nest of wasps, infinitesimal and battle-ready. He ran off to the north.

"This could prove to be difficult." He thought.

OK, Change of Plans.

While rereading my previous posts, I came to a startling revelation. It was that nothing I have said so far is of the slightest relevance to anything whatsoever.
With that said, I've decided to do what I like to think I do best (even though it isn't the case). Write. I shall, in the next few weeks and perhaps beyond be writing up several stories that I have or haven't already started and posting them here for y'all to read. You are of course under no obligation to read them, but I ask at least that you pretend you are, as that will give me the motivation to finish what I should have finished some time ago.
Until the first story post I will not be posting any more comments, so see you then.

Nick

The Joys of Higher Education

Well, another math test has come and gone, and as for all you ass holes out there who were suppose to be sending me positive auras, I'm PISSED. I mean did you ass holes finish your boxes of wine a few hours early this time and pass out? Did you decide that taking a little one on one shower time with your trouser snakes would be more important than my doing good on a math test for once? Whatever the case, I'm very disappointed in all of you.
I guess this means I'll be working at McDonald's after all. Which could be a blessing in disguise I suppose, what with the cheap, artery clogging food. Perhaps I'll even gain some weight for the first time in my life.
Holy shit, come to think of it, if I did that I could start to pump serious iron. The flimsy arms I now possess would grow to gigantic pythons; My Chest and stomach would be ripped; and I could go on the road as a professional body builder but leave halfway though the competition because I don't like the kind of person it makes me.
THEN I could travel around Cain style and fight crime in the dark alleys of random Canadian cities.
My God, how could my eyes have been blinded so? How could I not see how much I was wasting my time at these pointless medial studies?
Thank you my friends, for giving me the guidance I needed so badly.
But I must leave now, for the world is awaiting my help.
adieu comrades, adieu.
Nick

My First "REAL" Post.

I can't even believe it.
Writing on this thing is way more fun when you're under the influence.
Anyway, now that I've attained said state I'm much more free in thought. The worries of the world, evaporated as they now are can no longer burden my attention.
With that said, however, I now find myself completely void of all meaningful thought save for one concept. The fact is, I'm listening to A long Way Down by Matthew Good and it is completely worth my time and attention to let that fact be known to all of you fine people. The smarter ones among you will now be moving to your respective music players to play this fine song. The pirates among you now will be moving to their respective file sharing programs to download it if they don't already have it. Otherwise the first case applies. In any case find a copy of it as you won't be sorry.
With that out of the way, my thoughts are drawn to the game I've been playing for a few days now; Halo 2. Any of you familiar with the original Halo will know it's a great first person shooter game for Xbox and Pc that was released a few years back. Likely, the largest flaw of the original game was it's long repetitve level design, ultimately reducing a lot of the action (as fantastic as it is) to long slow drags up the same corridor fighting hordes of foes.
Halo 2 fixes that, adds a bunch of incredible bump mapping making the master chief look cooler times 8, throws in a bunch of new weapons and foes, the ability to dual wield guns, xbox live compatiblity, makes the ally and enemy AI waaaay smarter (npc marines can drive the Warthog for you now at least moderately well) and ups the storyline by several quarks.
All said, it's a kick ass game, even if the single player campaign is too short (and ends with a dirty cliffhanger). So those of you out there with an Xbox, go pick it up and give it a whirl.
Those of you out there without an Xbox, burn in hell.
Or buy an Xbox.
And Halo 2.
With that said, I depart for slumber as I have an early rise tomorrow and a math test to write.
Good night all.

Expecting your positive aura tomorrow at school,
Nick.

There are Others as Well

By the way guys, as it now stands, I'm the third person that I know of in my immediate circle of friends to have a blog.
So just in case you're interested, they are:
Marcus' Blog
Anderson's Blog

Enjoy.

I feel like Columbus

Amazement.
It's really the only word that can be even conceivably used to describe my feelings towards this fabulous new world. The world of the blog.
Soon millions of people will be flocking to this webpage daily to view my postings. To hang on my every word. To base their lives around my teachings.
Ah yes. 'tis truely a wondrous age we live in. I feel like Columbus, trying to find India, but finding indians of a completely different caliber. Or maybe John Cabot, showing up to Newfoundland for the first time, throwing that barrel over the side of his ship and hauling it up, only to find it full of fish.
Oh, heres another analogy (the last, you have my word). It's like when for a while we thought the atom was the smallest piece of matter possible, and then we split it and all that other stuff came out.
My friends, this is indeed the start of a magical era, where my every thought can be instantly transferred to the screens before your very eyes. And yes my children, they will be, I assure you.
So my friends, I implore you; let this not be your last visit to my domain. Let the winds of knowledge carry you back to my words always, and in the end, make you that much better for it.
Ya know, because I'm like... mega smart and all that.
Peace.